I was speaking with a reporter from The Province (Vancouver major newspaper) and she is doing a story on "the Liberal Government failed to keep a promise to anaphylactic children". She told me that she asked Minister Bond about this issue today in a media conference and Minister Bond said that she will be making an announcement on this next week, she believes it may ever be Monday! When the reporter asked "will it be a bill that is close to the one introduced by David Cubberley?" Minister Bond replied something along the lines of "we wanted something more flexible" - Can we afford to have too much flexibility?
okay I am not going to spend too much time speculating but rather wait and see, anxiously mind you.... as soon as I hear more I will post again.

“Children with life-threatening allergies need to be safe in B.C. schools, and our direction today is for all school districts to take immediate steps to ensure all students are protected,” said Bond. “Boards of education will now be required to have school-based anaphylaxis policies and practices that meet rigorous provincial standards.”

The Ministry of Education led a comprehensive consultation process with major stakeholders, including Anaphylaxis Canada, the Allergy/Asthma Information Association, the BCMA, health authorities, health officers, educators, trustees and parents over the summer to develop an Anaphylaxis Child Health and Safety Framework.

The framework will direct districts as they develop school-based policies for managing anaphylaxis in schools. The ministry, in consultation with members of the committee, will develop additional guidelines for schools and districts in the areas of training, monitoring and reporting. Every school district will be required to develop anaphylaxis policies and implement best practices, including:

· Providing a definition of anaphylaxis.

· Identifying individuals at risk.

· Encouraging the use of Medi-Alert identification.

· Emergency procedure plans.

· Record keeping.

· Storage and administration of medication.

· Incident debriefing.

· Development of allergy awareness, prevention and avoidance strategies.

· Training strategy.

· Defined roles and responsibilities.

· Education to create an allergy-aware school community.

“We made a commitment to ensure a framework was in place in September and we are delivering on that promise,” said Bond. “I am signing a ministerial order that has the force of law, to provide a rapid response to ensure schools are prepared to deal with an emergency situation involving a student with a life-threatening allergy.”

“I appreciated the opportunity to participate in the development of a framework for anaphylaxis policies in B.C. schools,” said Katharine Matthews, parent and Provincial Anaphylaxis Advisory Committee Member. “This is an important step in protecting children with life-threatening allergies in the ongoing collective process toward allergy awareness.”

“Families who have a child with severe allergies must have confidence that their schools are prepared to deal with an anaphylactic emergency,” said Les Dukowski, president of the Principals and Vice Principals Association. “I commend the Province for its leadership on developing provincial standards to ensure all schools throughout the province are prepared.”

Boards of education will be responsible for ensuring each school in the district has a school-based policy for monitoring and reporting anaphylaxis emergencies. Boards will be required to report this information in their annual achievement contracts with the Ministry of Education. Superintendents of achievement will work with districts to ensure development of policies begins immediately.

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For more information on government services or to subscribe to the Province’s news feeds using RSS, visit the Province’s website at www.gov.bc.ca.

_________________Allergic to soy, peanut, shellfish, penicillin

Last edited by gwentheeditor on Tue Sep 11, 2007 12:39 pm, edited 3 times in total.

I am very happy with this ministerial order, for it is one step below a law, from what I can tell. A colleague also relayed to me that a ministerial order has 'teeth' -- if school boards defy it, they can be docked funding so therefore it is in their greater interest to follow such things. And this order is a 'fast track' way of getting the districts to comply with providing a policy where as creating, debating and approving legislation would take a good year to implement.

I also find it interesting that they have to document anaphylactic emergencies in their year end reports. This type of accountability is important to me, and I am relieved that the government sees it this way as well.

YES!! It is a good day.

Caroline
ps I am going to update my back-to-school experiences in the appropriate section. But I must say this: we are on a much happier road this year already. YEAH!! My shoulders might finally get a chance to 'un'hunch....

Caroline2 - have you seen the actual order or the contents of the policy? i would like to see that before I comment. I don't like words like "framework" (too wishy washy for me) and i want to know how this is all going to happen, what are the "regourous provincial standards", etc. i am trying to get a copy of this info. if you get one, can you email it to me or tell me how to find it?? I want to be confident and optimistic that it meets all of what we wanted but I hesitate.... i will wait and see but would like to see soon as many people want clarification.

No, I haven't see the actual framework. From the the press release alone, though, I am still feeling confident we are getting somewhere. It may be premature to do the extended version of a happy dance, but I did just do a little jig.

I guess I read the annoucement like I read Sabrina's Law (now wouldn't THAT be a great comparison!) where there is an order that schools must do x,y,z for kids with anaphylactic allergies but the actual written policy is still composed by the individual school districts. Do I understand this correctly, both on the above annoucement and Sabrina's Law?

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